host: newspapers are reporting susan rice will be meeting with susan collins of maine and senator bob corker of tennessee, who is in line to be the ranking republican on the senate foreign relations committee, which will hold confirmation hearings for secretary of state nominees. these three republicans would need more republicans to come to their side to block susan rice's nomination. what do they need? guest: i think they need to make a case that she's not qualified to be secretary of state. we have not heard that case. one of the ironies of the benghazi probe and the way it is being linked to susan rice is not just that she had very little to do with benghazi at all, other than being out on the sunday talk shows on september 16 when she was the designated spokesperson and was reflecting on what the intelligence community had concluded a to that point, which was not where they ended up later on. that is what the republicans exercise, that there was a shift. it was a shift purely in the intelligence assessment and they are merely killing the messenger. this is a woman who has a very